The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion Part 12

Sookie felt terrible about snapping at her mother like that and immediately called Dr. Shapiro, and he met her for an emergency meeting. But he did not find her behavior alarming at all. "It's to be expected," he said.

Sookie understood that that kind of behavior might be expected somewhere else, but in Point Clear, Alabama, upset or not, she should never have raised her voice in public. It just wasn't ladylike, and besides, she was married to a dentist, and a certain amount of decorum was expected.

CHRISTMAS.

PULASKI, WISCONSIN.

1941.

MOMMA HAD TRIED. SHE STILL BAKED THE OPLATKI-POLISH CHRISTMAS wafers-as usual, but it was a bleak old Christmas in 1941. All of the songs about peace on earth and goodwill toward men that played in between the grim news of the war rang a little hollow that year. It seemed the whole country was preoccupied with one thing. Every large company in America was busy changing over, mobilizing, and gearing up to put all their resources toward the war effort. Everybody wanted to do something to try to help win the war and get the boys home again.

Fritzi had been home for only about a month when their old friend, bathroom inspector and nurse Dottie Frakes, came by for a visit and informed them that after today, she was taking a leave of absence from Phillips Petroleum to become an army nurse. After a big lunch, Poppa went back to work, and Momma and the other girls started to clean the kitchen. Dottie offered to help clean up, but Momma said, "No, you two just go relax."

Dottie got up and said, "All right, then, Fritzi, let's you and me go sit in the parlor and have a little catch-up chat."

As they went in, Dottie turned and pulled the wooden sliding doors shut and turned to Fritzi with a concerned look. "How long has your father had that cough?"

"Oh, quite a while, I think. He's had a bad cold. Why?"

"I didn't want to alarm your mother or the girls, but I don't like the sound of that cough."

"What do you mean?"

"I've worked in hospitals, and I know what that sound means."

"Oh ... what?"

"He needs to see a doctor as soon as possible."

That afternoon, Fritzi tried to get her father to go see the doctor, but he said, "Oh, Fritzi, I can't leave the station for that kind of foolishness. You know how shorthanded we are now. I'm fine. I'll be better tomorrow."

She put her hands on his shoulders and pleaded with him. "Please, Poppa. Just go for me."

He laughed. "If I'm not better in a week, I'll go. I promise."

When she had first arrived home, Fritzi had noticed how thin and tired her father looked, but when she felt his shoulders now, there was nothing there but skin and bones.

She hated to do it to Poppa, but she had to tell Momma what Dottie had said and see if Momma could talk some sense into him. Before she even finished the sentence, Momma had her ap.r.o.n off and her hat and coat on and was headed next door to the filling station. Five minutes later, she and Poppa were downtown, sitting in Dr. Renschoske's office. Momma was an old-fashioned wife and rarely questioned her husband in any way, but not this time.

The tests came back, and the diagnosis was as Dottie had suspected: advanced tuberculosis that had to be treated right away. But when the doctor started talking to him about the different sanitariums that specialized in TB treatments, Stanislaw would have no part of it. "Just give me some medicine. I have a business to run."

"Stanislaw, you won't be alive to run anything if you don't do what I tell you. You will go home and get in bed and rest until Linka and I work out where you are going and when."

He did, and in the meantime, his nineteen-year-old nephew Florian was put in charge of running the station. Three days later, the arrangements for Stanislaw had been made at the sanitarium. The hard part was getting him there. All the trains and buses were full of servicemen trying to get to bases. So Fritzi called a flying pal of hers and Billy's in Grand Rapids, who flew over and picked up Poppa to fly him all the way down to Hot Springs, Arkansas. Poor Poppa. He had flown off with two sets of clean pajamas, a sack full of sausages, and a rosary that Sophie had slipped into his pocket. When the plane had taken off, Momma, who had never been separated from him for even one night, had stood and cried into her ap.r.o.n and wondered if she would ever see him again.

AND AS IF THINGS couldn't get worse, Florian soon received his draft notice, as did Poppa's mechanic. The other fellow they had just hired to fill in quit to work in Sturgeon Bay, where he could make more money, and Momma was worried to death.

A week later, after Fritzi came home from work, Momma went into her room and closed the door behind her and told her about an offer she had received from a man in Oshkosh to buy the station. Fritzi was stunned that her mother would even think about selling. "You can't do that, Momma."

"But Fritzi, what will we do when Florian and the boys leave for good? We have to close down. There will be no one left to run the station. When I think how hard Poppa worked to get this place ... it will kill him for sure."

"You can't sell it, Momma."

"But Fritzi, the hospital costs so much. We have to. Who knows how long Poppa will have to stay away or how long the war will last. And there are no men left to hire. They will be all gone-either to the service or working at the factories. We have no choice."

Fritzi said, "Yes, we do."

"What?"

"I'll run it!"

"Oh, Fritzi, by yourself? You can't do that."

"No, not by myself. The whole family-all of us. Now that you have Angie to help cook, Gertrude, Tula, and Sophie can help."

"But, Fritzi, you can't have all girls running a filling station. n.o.body would come."

When Momma said that, something suddenly clicked in Fritzi's mind, and she said, "Momma, you just wait and see."

Later, Fritzi called a meeting in the kitchen with all the girls and told them her idea. They seemed skeptical. "But we don't know how to fix a motor or anything about carburetors and things like that," said Gertrude.

"No, but I do."

Tula said, "But it's so dirty over there. I don't want to get grease all over me."

"Oh, come on, girls. We can't let Poppa down now or Wink. We've all worked at the station at one time or another, and what we don't know, we can learn. Florian isn't leaving for a couple of weeks. He can teach you what you need to know, and I can teach you the rest. I know we can do it. Whatta ya say?"

The sisters all turned to Momma. "What do you think, Momma?"

Momma said, "I think you should listen to what Fritzi says. She's the man of the house now."

THE NEXT DAY, FRITZI gave her notice at the pickle factory. That night, she rooted around in the gas station files and found Poppa's old study materials from the service station management course he had taken. She sat down and studied all night long. It didn't look too hard. All you had to do was follow instructions.

1. Welcome greetings and windshield service 2. Gasoline solicitation 3. Radiator check, oil check, battery test, tire pressure check-including spare tire-lubrication check, vacuum service offered 4. Itemized collection and friendly farewell and thanks for stopping 5. Attendants must be neat and clean at all times, fingernails, uniforms, etc.

"Oh, h.e.l.l," thought Fritzi. This was going to be easy. She knew most of this stuff already.

The gals would need uniforms, so Momma took all of Wink's and Poppa's old uniform pants and shirts and cut them down to fit the girls. Just for an extra added touch, she embroidered in red on each individual shirt the words "Hi, I'm Fritzi" or "Hi, I'm Gertrude," and so on.

Fritzi had learned a little about organizing a work team from her old Flying Circus days, so she sat down and worked out a plan. And at the end of the week, everybody had a designated a.s.signment.

Tula would do most of the mechanical work. Gertrude, the strongest girl, would be in charge of changing tires and fixing flats. Fritzi would pump gas and check under the hood and drive the tow truck when needed. Sophie was good at math, so she would work as the cashier. Inside the station, they sold candy, potato chips, cold drinks, hot coffee, and Momma's sausages and homemade sandwiches and pastries. They also sold trinkets, key chains, lighters, gla.s.s ashtrays, and toys and gave away free maps and free postcards.

In three weeks' time, Fritzi and her sisters, wearing brand-new uniforms with hats and cute little black bow ties, were ready to start. When word got out that four good-looking sisters were now running a filling station, business suddenly started to pick up. Doing the air shows with Billy, Fritzi had learned a lot about advertising, and pretty soon, ads started appearing in local newspapers that featured a photo of the four smiling girls standing in front of the station with a caption above it that said: WHEN IN PULASKI, STOP AT WINK'S PHILLIPS 66 THE ALL-GIRL FILLING STATION.

They had signs put up along the highway that, underneath their logo, said: Is your car ailing? Let us kiss it and make it better.

Car dirty? Let us houseclean your car.

The prettiest mechanics in the state of Wisconsin.

Let us put the spark back in your plugs.

Fresh coffee, sandwiches, homemade candy, and Polish sausage inside.

Mothers, we'll change your wipers and your baby's diapers.

As an added attraction, a day before he left for the navy, Gertrude's boyfriend, Nard Tanawaski, had come to the station and rigged up the record player to four big outside speakers. After that, they played big-band swing music all day long. It added some cheer to the cold winter days.

As word continued to spread about the "All-Girl Filling Station," long-haul truck drivers suddenly made it a point to reroute their runs through Pulaski, and a lot of men all the way from Green Bay and as far away as Madison mysteriously developed car trouble.

Carloads of guys and gals carpooling to factories stopped in to fill up on their way to work. The music made them feel happy, and so did the four friendly girls with the big smiles. Before long, they even had big logging trucks swinging down across the border of Canada just to get a look.

Secretly, Fritzi had been worried whether her sisters would be able to handle it, but they surprised her at how they had jumped in and helped. Even though Sophie Marie was still a little shy, she was very pretty and, therefore, a big a.s.set. Nothing helped sales faster than a pretty girl, and the All-Girl Filling Station had four.

Dear Wink-a-d.i.n.k, I am sure you know by now that yours truly and your sisters are running the station, so don't worry. We will hold the fort down until that happy day when you come back and take over for good. Soon, I hope.

It's sure hard to look pretty and get dates with grease under your fingernails and with your hair smelling like gasoline. Momma and Angie are cooking almost day and night. We are selling sausages as fast as they can make them. But with the sugar rationing starting ... no more paczkis or pastries of any kind, and Gertrude is not happy about it.

Love, Fritzi P.S. Heard from Billy. He's down in Pensacola instructing naval cadets and says they are scaring the h.e.l.l out of him. Sure do miss him and wish I was in Florida today enjoying the sunshine, that's for sure. I am sending you a photo of the four of us taken at the station for the newspaper. Don't we look cute?

THE WAFFLE HOUSE.

POINT CLEAR, ALABAMA.

SOOKIE WAS DEEP IN THOUGHT IN BOOTH NO. 4 AND THEN LEANED IN and said, "The thing is, Dr. Shapiro, I can understand her not wanting me to know I was adopted, but all those years of her telling not only me, but my poor children, how lucky we were to be a Simmons. All that was a lie, and she's put us in a terrible position. I can't tell the Daughters of the Confederacy or the Kappas that Dee Dee and I are not really Simmonses without Lenore finding out. I hate being a fraud, but I don't want to upset her, either. You don't know me, but I've never really been this mad at anybody before, and it makes me feel so bad, but I just don't know how to get over it. I seem to be stuck."

"Well, first of all, as we've said, your anger and hurt at your mother are perfectly normal, and yes, it was a terrible thing to do to a child, but I think it might help you to know that most of her behavior was probably unintentional. Think of a person being born without a foot. In other words, your mother has a little something missing, and in her case, it's the ability to see or feel beyond oneself or empathize with another person's feelings, even one's own children. And in most cases they're not even aware they are doing it."

"Maybe ... but I still just don't understand how she could keep on lying to me all these years."

"I'm not so sure she was lying-at least not in her own mind-and as you have said, when your mother believes something, facts don't mean a thing."

"Well that's true. She's convinced she's related to the queen of England."

"Exactly, and sometimes this kind of delusional thinking is a survival skill gone wrong. What do you know about her childhood?"

"Not much ... just that she was raised by her grandmother. Her mother died in childbirth, and she said that when she was growing up, her daddy was hardly ever home. He was a state senator so he spent most of his time in Montgomery."

"I see. And has she ever mentioned her mother?"

"Only one time ..."

"Just once?"

"Yes."

After Sookie left the Waffle House, she realized it was strange. As obsessive and preoccupied as Lenore had been about the Simmons family line, she had never discussed anything about her mother, where she was from, or how old she was when she died. Her name hadn't even shown up in the family Bible. And whenever Sookie had asked about her, Lenore had made it quite clear she didn't want to talk about her. Lenore had never even mentioned her mother at all until that one day after the twins were born. Sookie had been exhausted, and all she wanted to do was stay in bed and rest, but Lenore had stormed into her room and thrown open the blinds. "I'm here to announce the good news. You are going to get up, and we are going out to lunch."

"Mother, not today, please. I'm too tired."

"Oh, come on, Sookie. You'll feel so much better if you do."

"But I don't feel like it. I don't think I ever want to get up again."

"Oh, don't be such a baby. I'm your mother, and you have to do what I say. It would be rude not to. Besides, haven't I always been right? You're just lucky to have a mother who cares. And don't forget you come from a long line of military leaders, and we always advance. We never retreat."

This was a conversation they had had many times, but on this particular day, for some reason, right in the middle of it, a strange faraway look had crossed over Lenore's face-one that Sookie had never seen before. It was as if she suddenly remembered something. Then she said rather sadly, "Oh, Sookie, you just don't know what it's like growing up without a mother. I even used to envy those poor little white-trash sharecropper families that lived out in the country. As poor as they were, at least they had a mother. We only get one chance in life, and I missed mine, and once you miss it ..." Just for a split second, Sookie thought she saw tears start to well up in her mother's eyes, but then Lenore quickly changed the subject.

Sookie tried to get her to talk more about it, but Lenore said, "There's nothing more to say, except that you and Buck need to get down on your hands and knees and thank your lucky stars you have me. Nothing stings more than an ungrateful child, you know. Now you get up out of that bed and get dressed, and put on something nice. We are going out to lunch, and let there be no ifs, ands, or buts about it. Your life awaits you out in the world, my girl, and you're not lollygagging your life away in bed."

PULASKI, WISCONSIN.

FRITZI HAD BEEN HOME FOR ONLY A SHORT WHILE, BUT SHE SOON found out that old Gussie Mintz back in Grand Rapids had been right. Flying was now in her blood, and as busy as she was running the station, she was becoming restless. She missed Billy, but there were still a few good-looking guys left who were doing war jobs. And that big Irish redheaded trucker, Joe O'Connor, from Manitowoc, who was always trying to get her to go out with him, was a good-looking son of a gun. She liked him a lot, but she was not in love, and she certainly had no interest in getting married or, G.o.d forbid, ever having children. She and Billy had too much to do after the war was over, but Joe was a great dancer, and she was not against having a little fun. After all, she had been to Milwaukee, and knew the score. And as Billy said, "Life is too short for regrets."

As the days went on, the filling station became the center of the war-drive effort in Pulaski. Uncle Sam needed all the supplies he could get for the troops. As an incentive, Fritzi set up a kissing booth outside, and anything that Uncle Sam needed, from a bundle of paper to tin cans, would get you a kiss from one of the girls. And like all filling stations, theirs was an official drop-off place for the huge rubber drive, and considering the reward, all the guys from near and wide collected all the rubber they could-everything from old tires and water hoses to sink stoppers and canning jar tops. One man, eager to get a kiss from one of the girls, even stole his wife's rubber girdle and brought it down, and Mrs. Luczak wasn't happy about it, either. She marched down to the station and got it right back. She said, "Fritzi, I'm as patriotic as the next one. They can have everything else, but I need my girdle."

That night, Momma sat down as she always did and wrote to her husband at the sanitarium.

Dear Poppa, We miss you, but we know you are busy getting well, and we can't wait for you to come home. Oh, Poppa, you would be so proud of your girls. They are all working so hard to help win this old war as fast as possible so Wink and all the boys can come back home soon. They all seem so grown-up now. Even Sophie Marie is such a different girl now. She has realized how pretty she is. All the boys want a kiss from her, but she is the same sweet girl who never misses ma.s.s. Wish I could say the same for the other girls, but I know G.o.d will forgive them for sleeping in on Sunday. They work so hard during the week. I may have gotten good news about Fritzi. She has been seeing a lot more of that nice Irish boy I told you about. I just pray she will get all that flying planes out of her head and marry him and stay home. We got a nice long letter from Nurse Dorothy Frakes today. She is overseas somewhere and says so many of our poor boys are being killed and hurt, but she says all the nurses are working as hard as they can to save as many as they can. Rest up, Poppa, and don't worry about a thing. We are all fine.

Love, Momma